Current chemotherapy strategies struggle to deal with the variability of cancer. Given the variations in the disease from patient to patient, individual, patient-specific treatments would likely be more successful than current methods. In order to create these individualized treatments, the cancer cells from each patient must be isolated and analyzed. Previous methods of cancer cell isolation from tumor samples are insufficient. These methods do not isolate cancer cells with enough specificity, and typically rely on techniques likely to alter the cancer cells; these alterations may in turn disrupt the analysis necessary for prescription of individualized treatment. In order to allow for cancer cell analysis, isolation strategies must isolate purely cancerous cells from tumor biopsies while preserving the physical and biochemical characteristics of the cells.